Extract from Westminster Hall debate on Funding for Major Infrastructure Projects - May 3

Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con):...In this country, major financing problems are often not about the money committed to a project at the beginning, but project creep. That results from an inability to go through those first three phases. I think in particular of the Great Western electrification upgrade, which the former Chancellor, George Osborne, signed off at £888 million. A huge number of unrealistic expectations were built into that quote. For instance, the infrastructure provider, Network Rail, suggested that it would be able to pile between 17 and 30 piles an hour. In fact, in the end, it was only achieving three, and unsurprisingly the whole cost of the project went up...

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